Articles

Over the past week, I’ve had a rather frustrating experience. Since it’s happened more than once, I decided to blog about it.

The thing is… I’m the one who lives in my brain. I’m the one who thinks and feels the things I think and feel. I’m the only person in existence who is actually me.

So I’m not quite sure why a few people this past week have decided they can tell me I’m wrong about what I’m thinking or feeling, and they can prove it because I said X or did Y.

My actions and words are not always my thoughts and feelings. There are times when I hide how I’m feeling, or I keep my thoughts to myself. Sometimes it’s because they aren’t things I want other people to know; other times, I know my depression or anxiety is getting to me and the things going around in my brain probably aren’t accurate. I don’t want to let those things out when I know they might be a result of depression and anxiety messing with me.

Other times, I do let something out, but in a different setting from the one where the situation is. (Confusing sentence…) For example, on a forum I belong to, I have a blog where I often post about problems I’m having involving the important people in my life, using nicknames so no one knows who I’m actually talking about. I post those things *there* so I don’t talk about the problems to the people involved until I’m sure there actually is a problem, or until I figure out how to bring it up. Blogging there helps me sort out whether the problem is real or just another depression/anxiety jumble, and it also helps me find a way to bring it up to the other person if necessary.

In that blog, I say numerous times that the things I post are generally *not* shared with the people I’m blogging about. And yet someone the other day told me what one of those other people was thinking because of what I’d said. When I pointed out that they didn’t *know* the other person and so had no clue what the other person might be thinking, that I hadn’t said anything to the other person about the situation, and that in fact I hadn’t even said in the blog what this someone claimed I’d said, and I indicated where I *hadn’t* said it, they told me I was wrong. Not only was I wrong about what the other person was thinking (about something he didn’t even know about)…I was wrong about what *I* was thinking and feeling.

As you might have noticed, I’m still a bit irked about that. (That was the most recent of the incidents from the past week.) Because here’s the thing. If you’re stating an opinion and I show you that your opinion is based on something untrue, does it make sense to tell me that my *facts* are wrong because they don’t agree with your *opinion*? And what in any corner of the universe gives someone the right to tell me I’m either wrong or lying about what’s going on in my own brain?

The danger of posting anything in any online venue is that you’re going to get responses, and you might not always like what you read. I get that. But there’s a difference between expressing an opinion against what someone has said, and telling someone that *you* know better than *they* do about their own thoughts and feelings.

Unless you’re a mind reader, maybe keep your opinions confined to things the other person has actually said, and not what you think is going on in their head? Just a suggestion.

Blog Right Column Demo

This is default content to showcase the blog's right sidebar column. Once you publish your first widget to this position, this sample content will be replaced by your widget.